Some Things You Can’t Find Out and Other Mark Twain Wisdom

Some things you can’t find out; but you will never know you can’t by guessing and supposing; no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can’t find out. And it is delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting. If there wasn’t anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out, and I don’t know but more so. – Mark Twain

Was feeling in need of inspiration today and started reading Mark Twain quotes online at www.twainquotes.com. Forgot how much I liked Mark Twain. It’s amazing that one person could be so witty. Felt like I was having a conversation with him.

These are a few of my favorite quotes that resonated with me today:

I have been on the verge of being an angel all my life, but it’s never happened yet.

Geniuses are people who dash off weird, wild, incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, & then go & get booming drunk & sleep in the gutter. Genius elevates a man to ineffable spheres [sic] far above the vulgar world, & fills his soul with a regal contempt for the gross & sordid things of earth. It is probably on account of this that people who have genius do not pay their board, as a general thing.

Who was it who said, “Blessed is the man who has found his work”? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work–not somebody else’s work. The work that is really a man’s own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man’s work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it.

This is my sense of how to get out of economic stagnation globally – relax and play more. Not exactly a popular view. Maybe we are in need of some great writers and artists to show the world how to play.